Two Wales old-timers were at the heart of that Scarlets’ victory.<\/p>\n
Lock Jake Ball, 34, was one of the defensive heroes as he topped the tackle charts with 19 as he continues to impress on his Scarlets return<\/p>\n
“Jake is in great shape,” said Van der Berg. “He puts the hard work in and is still a master of the game.”<\/p>\n
Van der Berg believes such form could even see Wales coach Steve Tandy contemplating an international recall for Ball, who previously played Test rugby in 2021.<\/p>\n
“He wants to knock on the door and look if there’s opportunities high up for him,” said Van der Berg,<\/p>\n
“He’s shown against Cardiff what he can do, so I can’t see why not.”<\/p>\n
Scrum-half Gareth Davies, 35, took the plaudits with another try double at the Arms Park, including a trademark spectacular intercept try.<\/p>\n
Davies has retired from international rugby but his player-of-the-match display against Cardiff demonstrated why he remains one of Welsh rugby’s leading number nines.<\/p>\n
“It’s fantastic what he is doing out there,” said Van der Berg.<\/p>\n
“Gareth is like a good red wine. Some players as they get older, they get better.<\/p>\n
“He showed again his experience and he’s still got the speed to finish that try off.”<\/p>\n
At the other end of the scale, Wales centre Eddie James impressed in the 13 jersey.<\/p>\n
Tandy is searching for a solution to his outside centre problem position, with Gloucester’s Max Llewellyn set to miss the Six Nations because of a knee injury. <\/p>\n
Van der Berg compared the 23-year-old James to South Africa centre Andre Esterhuizen: “He’s [James] got something.<\/p>\n
“He’s got the size and everything there. He needs a bit of time and as he gets more experience, he’s going to play for many years and play for Wales. <\/p>\n
“He’s a good player who can play 12 and 13. He’s also got speed and the offloads are there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Wales old-timers were at the heart of that Scarlets’ victory. Lock Jake Ball, 34, was one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-363097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}